House of Dogs
by hashire
Summary: Tsume is pregnant and set in her ways, Hana wants a dog and gets a brother, and Kiba is too careless in battle. Inuzuka centered fic.
1. Tsume

_Disclaimer:_ Ha! I'm just a poor student whose parents are paying her way through college. Like I'd own Naruto.

_Notes:_ Written for naruto_wishlist on LJ, though my assignee fell off the face of the Earth before this was posted, so it ended up not being for her anymore. The santa-nin got revealed a week or so ago and I just haven't gotten around to posting this here because I'm lazy and don't really like it. Anyway, three short stories about the Inuzuka. First is Tsume. Hana is next. (Edited 6/16/10 to fix errors and a few other things.)

Character chart:  
Shippo (Tail): Inuzuka, father of Hana and Kiba  
Akaiha (Red Teeth): Inuzuka, sister of Tsume and aunt of Hana and Kiba  
Aoke (Blue Fur): Akaiha's dog, mother of the Haimaru Sankyodai, Hana's dogs.

All are my creations, though I was given help with the names, haha.

**_Tsume_**

It's evening and Tsume is hurrying home, jumping from roof to roof. Kuromaru dashes after her, one step behind, unable to catch up with the nimble woman.

Tsume lands lightly in front of the Inuzuka compound, bends over, her hands falling to her knees for support, and vomits into the bushes. Kuromaru moves up next to her and she presses a hand into his thick, black fur. She heaves again and Kuromaru makes a small whining noise.

"Tsume?" A voice calls her name from the door and Tsume glances up. She spits twice and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, still leaning on Kuromaru. Akaiha looks worried and steps out to help Tsume, but she straightens up and walks past her sister into the house.

Kuromaru's claws click soothingly against the tiles of the kitchen and Tsume fills a glass with water. Akaiha is there in a second and snatches the glass away before Tsume puts it to her lips. She sets it on the counter before turning back to her sister.

"If you drink that, it'll come right back up," Akaiha warns. Tsume scowls and coughs, opening her mouth to say something, but shuts it after a moment of contemplation. "If you want to gargle," she continues, "you can do that in the bathroom."

"If I had wanted to be scolded, I would have gone and talked to Mom." Akaiha doesn't flinch from Tsume's tone, just dumps the water out of the glass and turns it upside down to dry next to the sink. Tsume huffs and glares harder at Akaiha, but it doesn't appear to be having any affect of her sister, so she turns away.

Tsume stumbles over to the table and Akaiha turns on the water again, holding a rag under it. Kuromaru puts his head in her lap, and she absently strokes his right ear. He lets out a long sigh and she can feel the heat of his breath on her hand. She shuts her eyes for a moment, trying to get her bearings.

"Is there something wrong, Tsume?" Akaiha holds the cool rag to Tsume's forehead. She leans into the gentle touch, reaching up to take the rag from Akaiha's hand, but she holds firm. Tsume frowns and wipes her mouth with her other hand again, echoing Kuromaru's long sigh.

"Hokage says he won't be giving me any more missions while I'm pregnant." She'd just returned from a short tracking mission that she completed, done mostly alone. And she finished it absolutely fine. Her stomach wouldn't be getting in the way for a while, her being only 17 weeks pregnant. Her vest covered the small curve that was already there, so that definitely isn't a problem.

Akaiha looks thoughtful as she drags the rag lightly over Tsume's brow. A dry hand smoothes her hair back from her face, and Tsume wonders when her sister started acting so motherly. After all, she's the one having a baby.

"I don't know how he even knew," Tsume continues when Akaiha says nothing. "I'm barely showing." She absently undoes her vest and presses a hand against the small bump on her lower abdomen. She moves her hand in a slow circle, bumping Kuromaru's nose in the process. He flinches back and walks away to the fridge, which he noses open. Akaiha takes the cloth away from Tsume's forehead and walks over to the sink, and Tsume feels oddly lonely.

"Why don't you get some rest?" Akaiha suggests after a long pause, wringing out the cloth over the sink. "You don't look so good." Tsume barks laughter at this statement and leans her elbows on the table, her head in her hands.

"Thanks," she says, rubbing her eyes. The statement is probably true, considering how little sleep she's gotten in the past few days, and the fact that she'd just thrown up her lunch. She hasn't had a chance to eat dinner, but her stomach still hasn't settled and she thinks it would be best not to.

"I'm just telling the truth," Akaiha says lightly, nudging Kuromaru away from the fridge and shutting the door after pulling something out. She puts some meat on the plate and sets it on the ground where Kuromaru starts to wolf it down. "So spoiled, don't you think?"

Tsume hums in agreement and stands slowly. "Speaking of spoiled, where's Aoke?" She asks after looking around for the conspicuously absent dog.

"Asleep," Akaiha responds vaguely, rummaging through one of the cupboards. Tsume nods but stops quickly, since it makes her stomach lurch. She's never thrown up as much as she has in the past few months. How she's gaining weight, she doesn't really know.

"I still can't believe the Hokage thinks I'm incapable of going through missions just because I'm pregnant. He's acting like I'm disabled or something." Akaiha looks over at her, and Tsume continues. "So what if I need larger rations on my missions and I get sick occasionally. That doesn't make much difference in my performance. I mean –"

"Tsume." Akaiha cuts her off sharply, and Tsume has to look at her sister. "Stop acting like nothing's changed. Everything has. You're going to have a baby in less than five months. You won't be able to take on missions for a long time. You need to be here to take care of that child. Shippo won't be able to take care of it for extended periods of time, and neither will I. You know that a baby needs to be nursed."

Tsume stands next to the counter, a bit dumbfounded. Akaiha has always been so good-natured, so collected. Tsume can count on her hands the times she's heard her sister raise her voice in the past few years. Akaiha watches her for a moment before her features soften a little.

"Tsume," she starts, her voice calm and soft, "You're eighteen. You're so young. Even though the life of a shinobi hardens a person and ages them mentally, you're still just a teenager. You need to recognize that.

"I love you, Tsume. I only want what's best for you and the baby. You know that." Tsume nods again, retches, and vomits in the garbage can that's conveniently next to her. Akaiha walks over to her and wraps her arms around Tsume in a loose hug before guiding her out of the kitchen and into her room.

"It's hard to believe you're only twenty," Tsume says lightly, curling up under the blankets on her bed. Akaiha smiles and tucks her in. "Or maybe you've suddenly turned into Mom." Akaiha flicks her nose for the comment and leaves the room without responding.

"She's right, you know." Kuromaru jumps on the bed next to Tsume, settling down. He puts his head on his paws, just short of the pillows.

"I know," Tsume replies tiredly. She shifts so her back is to her faithful partner. "I guess I always knew all of that. I just had to hear it to really believe it." Though she won't admit it, Tsume is quite stubborn and set in her ways.

"I wonder how Shippo will react to finding that you're pregnant with his child," Kuromaru muses, rubbing his good eye with a paw.

"How do you know I haven't told him already?" Tsume retorts, slightly irritated that Kuromaru knows this fact. Only her mother and sister know of her pregnancy, and she's simply not ready to tell her almost-boyfriend the truth.

"Because the only time you've talked to him after you found out was to ask him to return the watch he had taken." Tsume only grumbles in response. It's not like he really needs to know. After all, most dogs don't stay around to be a father to their puppies, and considering the way her father didn't marry her mother or spend too much time raising her and her sister, it seems to be the same with the humans of the Inuzuka clan. It doesn't even occur to her to change that.

Before she dozes off, she mutters, "I'll tell him tomorrow." It shouldn't be too hard. And, even if he's not thrilled with the prospect of being a father, she knows that she can handle him and this whole thing just fine by herself. After all, she has helped so many dogs give birth to litters of puppies.

"I can do it," she mumbles in her sleep, and Kuromaru nudges her neck to remind her that she's not alone. "We can do it," she corrects herself, pushing her head into her pillow and falling into a deeper sleep.


	2. Hana

_Disclaimer:_ Ha! I'm just a poor student whose parents are paying her way through college. Like I'd own Naruto.

_Notes:_ I'm fond of this part. I don't know why. It was the easiest to write and . . . I just like it. (Edited 6/16/10 to fix errors and a few other things.)

**_Hana _**

By midmorning Hana is kicking the chair she's sitting in with her heels impatiently. Auntie Akaiha has been coming out of the room at odd intervals with Aoke behind her; the dog is now heavy with her puppies. Hana wishes Aoke would stay with her but she's forever following Akaiha. What Hana really wants right now is a dog of her own.

What she's getting is a little brother.

She scowls at her aunt when she emerges from the room once more. "Why is this taking so long?" Hana demands, kicking the chair for emphasis. "Mama went into labor last night." Her aunt pats her head.

"It takes a long time," she responds, sitting down next to Hana. She sighs and sinks down into her chair. "When Aoke has her puppies it'll take a long time, too."

"Oi!" Tsume calls from her room. Hana starts and begins to jump out of her chair but Akaiha stops her with a cool hand on top of hers. "Akaiha! Get back in here!"

"I don't want you to see your mother in such a state," Akaiha explains to her, stroking Hana's cheek with that same hand, before standing and walking back into Tsume's room. Hana stares at the door and kicks the chair once more.

No one's been paying much attention to her lately, ever since Tsume started to get really big. All everyone in the clan talked about was the baby and not how Hana was progressing in her tracking and defensive skills.

Not that her mother hadn't been still paying plenty of attention to her. She'd been home more ever since she'd started getting rounder, and Hana helped her around the compound, following her like an eager puppy, almost tripping Tsume a few times.

(And when that happened, Tsume would snap at her; Hana would then run to Auntie Akaiha and jump on the counter on the far side of her office to watch her aunt do her medical work until her mother would come and heft her off the counter so they could go curl up together on Tsume's bed until they both fell asleep.)

Hana starts again when she hears a wail in the other room; it's definitely not her mother, or any dog. She stands and runs to the door and pushes it open, and, there in her aunt's arms is a naked baby, squalling so loud that Hana covers her ears and runs away.

Later, Auntie Akaiha finds her in her room; she's "hiding" in the big pile of stuffed animals in her corner. The woman plucks one of them, a dog with a missing eye and ear, off Hana's head and smoothes her hair back.

"I don't like him," Hana says, not looking at Akaiha. Her aunt sighs and smiles before picking up the six-year-old. Hana pulls the one-eyed, one-eared dog from Auntie Akaiha's grip and hugs it to herself, looking back at her mountain of stuffed animals and wishing she was still there.

Her mother is sitting up in bed when Akaiha brings Hana into the room. She's half naked and Kuromaru is on the bed with her, head on one of her pillows. She's supporting the baby with one arm, holding him to her breast.

She sets Hana down on the edge of the bed and the little girl glares at the baby, who is nursing very happily.

"I don't like him," Hana says snippily. "Can we give him away?"

Tsume looks at Hana for a long moment, and then throws her head back and laughs. The baby is dislodged from her sudden movements and starts to cry, but Tsume settles him back in and he begins to suckle again. Hana is very irritated at this point.

"What?" Hana demands as she folds her arms and scrunches up her brow. She bares her teeth to show her crossness better, and Akaiha joins in Tsume's laughter.

"We can't just give Kiba away," Tsume says. Her voice sounds rougher than usual, and Hana looks at her face for the first time. She appears more tired than Hana has ever seen her. She wants to put her head in her mother's lap, but the baby would get in the way and she wouldn't be able to see her mother's face.

"Why not?" She huffs, crossing her arms over her chest. "Isn't that what we're going to do with Aoke's puppies?" Aoke, who is settled on the floor next to Akaiha, lifts her head at the mention of her name, and then snorts. Hana glares at her. Why is everyone laughing at her today?

"Hana, this is so much different," Tsume says fondly, running her fingers down Kiba's little arm. "I didn't give you away after I had you, did I?" Hana pouts and fails to see the point. Why would anyone want to give her away? After all, people in the clan are always going on about how pretty she's becoming and how much she looks like both her father and mother. Not to mention the fact that she knows she's going to be a great ninja one day.

Tsume somehow knows what Hana is thinking and runs a soothing hand through her daughter's hair. She then licks her thumb and rubs it against Hana's face, cleaning off the smudge Hana has been sporting since she finished her breakfast. Despite the motherly gestures, the little girl feels lost and just wants her mother to herself. But now that Kiba has finished nursing and still curled up in their mother's arms, and with Kuromaru on Tsume's other side, there's no room for her to squeeze in, and she feels like crying.

Instead, Hana runs from the room. Her mother calls her name and the baby starts to wail, and no one comes after her. She does start to cry then.

Hana runs to a place she knows that she'll be welcome no matter what. She pushes open the door to her father's home without knocking and hurries around the house, looking for Shippo. She finds him in the kitchen, making lunch, and she throws herself against his legs, almost knocking him over. He does, however, drop the jar he's holding, and it smashes on the floor.

"Hana, please be more careful," he chastises, pushing her hands away from his legs. She sobs and Shippo looks down at her. He kneels to her level on the broken grass and takes her face in his hands, rubbing a tear away. "What's the matter?"

She snuffles and manages to gasp out, "M-Mama h-had the b-baby." Shippo looks elated for a moment to hear the news, but he quickly changes his expression, looking very worried.

"Isn't that a good thing, Hana?" He picks her up and puts her on the counter so he doesn't have to kneel anymore.

"But I don't like him!" Hana has calmed down a bit and can speak without stuttering and gasping for breath, but her eyes are still shining with tears, and when she blinks they overflow and run down her cheeks. Shippo wipes them away again. He doesn't say anything for a few moments, waiting for the little girl to speak again.

"He's loud and ugly and I don't want him to be around," she explains. "I don't want him but Mama says we can't give him away." She looks up at her father to see if he'll laugh at her like her mother and aunt did, but his expression remains the same.

"Hana, we can't just give him away," Shippo says after thinking for a bit. "He is your brother, after all, and babies tend to be loud. He'll grow up before you know it and you'll probably like him a lot." He pauses, frowns. "What's his name, by the way?"

"Kiba," Hana replies, her tone bitter. She suddenly doesn't want to talk about this any more. "Daddy, can I spend the day with you? You don't have any missions, right?"

"No," he draws out his response, and Hana wonders if he'll tell her that he has to take her home and that he wants to see Kiba. But he smiles at her and takes her off the counter, mindful of the broken glass. "Let's have some lunch. We can spend the afternoon together but you'll have to go home this evening."

"All right," she agrees, hugging his legs tightly. She eases off when Shippo touches her head, and she smiles up at him.

Shippo helps her train all afternoon, showing her how to throw a dull shuriken at the target set up behind the Inuzuka compound. Hana is in focus again, and she loves it. But the day ends quickly and her father picks her up to take her home.

Auntie Akaiha is waiting in the entryway, and takes Hana from Shippo. "She's in her room," Akaiha says, tilting her head toward it. She turns her attention back to the girl in her arms; she doesn't smile when her aunt tugs on her cheek, trying to pull the corner of her mouth up. After realizing she couldn't make her smile this way, she tells her, "I have a surprise for you, Hana."

"Really?" Hana thought that when she returned home, it would be all about the baby. After all, her father had already left her there.

"Yes," Akaiha says. "Aoke had her puppies." Hana's mouth drops open and then she wiggles in her aunt's arms.

"I wanna see them!" She says, almost jumping to the floor. Hana runs to her aunt's room to find Aoke half-asleep, three small, gray puppies nursing from her. "Oooh, they're so cute!" Aoke opens one eye and smiles at her, somehow.

"Hana, your mother wants to see you." Hana is reluctant to go back into her mother's room, but she follows her aunt.

"What is it?" Hana asks right away. She wants to go back to the puppies.

Shippo is holding Kiba and her mother is dressed and sitting up in bed again. She smiles at Hana and beckons her.

"I'm sure your aunt has told you that Aoke has had her puppies," Tsume says, and Hana nods, a quick jerk of her head. "Well, we've been talking for a long time about it, and we think they should be your dogs." Hana's mouth drops open again, and she really can't believe it.

"Really?" She repeats, dumbfounded. "All of them?"

"Yes, all three of them," Akaiha responds, from across the room. "We're going to name them the Haimaru Triplets. Do you like that?"

"Yes!" She almost yells, and the baby starts crying, but she doesn't care.

Today, she decides, is the best day ever.


	3. Kiba

_Disclaimer:_ Ha! I'm just a poor student whose parents are paying her way through college. Like I'd own Naruto.

_Notes:_ Ugh. Hardest part to write. Anyway, this is the final part. (Edited 6/16/10 to fix errors and a few other things.)

**_Kiba_**

The first thing that hits him when he wakes up is the sickeningly clean smell of everything around him. Kiba knows he's not home even before he opens his eyes, and groans.

He finds that he can only open one of his eyes; the other is bandaged shut. He head hurts and he can still taste blood. He can't feel some parts of his body but he thinks that it's probably just painkillers making him numb.

Hana is sitting next to his bed, a book in one hand, the other buried in the fur of the smallest Haimaru Triplet. The others are on the floor next to her feet, heads on their paws, resting but not sleeping.

The scene is familiar but Kiba can't put his finger on why at first. Akamaru is lying in a large bed next to his (but he has bandages on all of his paws and up his back legs and he's much, much bigger than before); he's wrapped in bandages too (but they're covering most of his body this time; when he flexes his fingers he feels the rough texture of them against his fingertips); there are dogs in the room again (but many, many more this time, it seems; he can smell them but he can't see them).

Uchiha Sasuke. The name flashes in his head and he remembers being twelve and in the same place, and he barks a laugh before it dissolves into coughing. Funny how the few times he has gotten seriously injured, it has had to do with the Uchiha.

Hana looks up from her book at the noise and frowns at Kiba, who is on his side, hacking coughs wracking his body. She picks up a glass of water from the side table, hauls him up so he's sitting, and puts the glass to his lips, holding the back of his neck to keep him in check.

Kiba swallows and drags the back of his hand over his mouth after Hana takes the glass away. "I'm not a dog, Hana," Kiba grumbles, but doesn't push away the hand on the back of his neck. It's rubbing at the tense muscles there and it's very, very nice.

"You used to eat dog food," Hana reminds him, setting down the glass of water and bringing her now free hand to brush his hair out of his face. Her fingers catch on a snarl and he whines. Her hand on the back of her neck squeezes a bit harder and he relaxes again.

"That was a long time ago." Kiba tries to scowl up he's so relaxed by her gentle touch that he can't. A one-eyed glare only makes Hana smile, but her expression hardens quickly.

"I told you to be careful," Hana says softly, her tone slightly scolding. "Don't you remember?"

Kiba does remember. Sound attacked silently and suddenly. They were sent in different directions and Hana had told him that and leaned over to kiss his forehead. He hated to think that she would worry about him and leapt away without saying anything to her. He was a good ninja, didn't she know that? There was nothing to worry about; of course he would be careful, right?

But Kiba hadn't really been careful. He jumped at the first Sound ninja he saw, ignoring Shino's frantic movements behind to him stop and wait. Even as a kikaichuu bit his neck, he launched himself on top of the enemy, Akamaru a step behind him.

And perhaps he really hadn't thought it out when the other ninja summoned snakes straight off, and he wasn't able to do anything to stop them. Somehow, in the end, he is alive and in the hospital, his sister holding his neck; Akamaru, asleep in the bed next to him, is looking rather tense himself.

Kiba's thrown roughly back to the present when Akamaru moves and whimpers in his sleep. Hana lets go of him and moves over to Akamaru's bed. Kiba is surprised and falls back on the bed, wincing and trying not to groan in pain. The medicine they gave him must be wearing off already.

"Sorry," Hana says shortly, placing a hand on Akamaru's head and lifting up one of his paws with the other. "The antivemon is still working. Those snakes that were summoned by the Sound nin were poisonous, and I needed to do research before I could administer it to Akamaru."

They lapse into silence, and Kiba shuts his eye. Hana shuffles around the room and Akamaru mewls here and there.

"You don't have to worry about me, Hana," Kiba mutters. Hana looks up and frowns at him. He opens his eye again. She looks like she's about to say something but he cuts her off. "I'm a good ninja. You know that. Everyone knows that!" (He knows that that's not exactly true, but, really, everyone should know.) "So you shouldn't worry."

Hana opens her mouth but Akamaru whines and, like Kiba, opens one eye to look at her (though he has no bandages over the other; he must be doing it because he can't open both eyes). She returns to tending to him before giving Kiba a hard look.

"Will he be okay?" Kiba asks, almost belatedly. His head is still foggy from the painkillers and the pain that's slowly coming back, but he makes no indication that he's really starting to feel anything. He can handle the pain. He knows Akamaru can too. They're a team and they'll make it through this.

"He will," she says vaguely, rubbing one of his back legs. Akamaru has shut his eye again, and he seems to be enjoying her ministrations. It appears that she's momentarily forgotten his words from before, but then she lets go of Akamaru's leg and turns to Kiba. "You know, Kiba, I have every right to be worried about you. Look what happened to you. You're so bandaged up, and the medical ninjas say you might not be back on your feet for awhile. You need to be more careful."

"No I don't," he grumbles, trying to turn on his side. He can't move his arm very well, though, and it hurts to lie on it, so he rolls onto his back again. "Anyway, isn't it a ninja supposed to put their life on the line for their village?"

"No," a gruff voice says at the door, and the distinctive sound of Kuromaru's claws against the floor interrupt the sudden silence. Tsume doesn't smile or greet Kiba, just stares at him, frowning like Hana is. "It's your job to protect the village, not die for it. If that happens, all you'll be is a name on that stone."

"I thought it was an honor," Kiba says, remembering that his father's name is on it. "That's what you said when Dad died." Tsume smiles crookedly, walks over to his bed, and leans against the wall next to it.

"It is for your father," Tsume replies, and Kiba finds it all very confusing. Maybe it's just the pain. His bandaged eye is really starting to hurt. He wants to go back to sleep. "He was a great man," she muses, looking out the window on the other side of the room. "He loved you two very much. And he died courageously.

"I heard from your teammate, Aburame, that you just jumped into a battle without thinking. You know you should keep your head in battle. That's part of being a ninja."

Kiba shuts his eye and grimaces. "Maybe I was," he mutters, flexing his toes and wincing again. "But I was just trying to help protect Konoha."

"You can better protect it when you're_ alive_. And when you're not all bandaged up and in a hospital bed," Tsume responds. "If you weren't already all bandaged up I might have smacked you. But, considering all the pain you must be in, I'll refrain."

"Thanks," he says softly, opening one eye to look at Akamaru. He's asleep again, Hana lightly stroking his fur. "Are you sure he'll be okay?" He asks her again, and this time, she nods and looks very sure. It doesn't quite occur to him that she might just be humoring him.

"I'll go get a nurse to come and give you something to knock you out again," Tsume says, and she pats his cheek lightly before walking out.

A nurse arrives shortly and gives him an injection that soothes him almost right away, and he dozes off with his mother by his side and his sister by Akamaru's.

Kiba knows they're right, and thinks in his sleep that maybe it's better that they do worry about him, rather than not caring at all.


End file.
